ARTIFICIAL INCUBATING AND BROODING 



an increased price, quicker sales and better profits to the poultiy- 

 man. 



PROPER BROODING HOUSES ESSENTIAL 



I spoke of the remarkable attraction that broiler raising 

 seemed to have for the beginners in poultry work, and to such 

 the very great bettering of incubators and brooding and feeding 

 comes as a great boon. The distressing failures, such as I have 

 seen many of, should now be less common. One such, in a 

 pleasant town about thirty miles west of Philadelphia, is worth 

 citing as a warning. In this case two young men from the city 

 had thought to better their pecuniary condition by broiler 

 raising. They b uilt a hot water pipe brooder house a hundred 

 feet long.^^^M fivt- huinlrL-d eggs and went ti. w.irl^. A tiiend 

 with whom'^^^Ls making an o\'er-niglil visit 

 told me of ^^Mr |H)()r sneeess, and snggi-sted 

 that we drive over m the morning 

 and see them. \V 

 we found them 

 c o n t emplating 

 an incubator full 

 of eggs which 

 should have 

 hatched the day 

 before, and from 

 which not one 

 chick had come. 

 Closing the shut- 

 ters (the incu- 

 bators were be- 

 ing run in the 

 old farm house 

 parlor), we test- 

 ed about half 

 the eggs, and 

 told them they 

 hadn't ventila- 

 ted the incuba- 

 tor at all (ap- 

 parently) ; had 

 not put any 

 moisture in the 

 machine the 

 18th day, andjn 

 tion to those^fflid 

 their eggs ^^^e 

 about half fertile, ,s< 

 were only entitled 

 about 150 chic 

 anyway. j 



The air wa( ' 

 there for a little 

 but talking did no good, 

 and while they in tlieir 

 lurid dreams had ])i(tnre 

 from every ^S (ni wniter at tliat!) 

 tent fact was their work was a fail- 

 ure. They had already incubated 

 over 2,000 eggs and hatched less 



than 300 chickens, and the brooder house showed at a glance 

 the momentweentered.it that no one could "raise"' chickens 

 in it. There was a "chill" in the air that went to the 

 marrow, and chicks cannot possibly be grown in such an 

 atmosphere. The brooder house had been built with 

 half-dried Itmiber, after freezing weather came in the early 

 winter, and to save fifty dollars or so a heater two 

 sizes too small had been bought. There was no heat ex- 

 cept the two flow and two return pipes under the hovers, and 

 the hovers were close up against the partition along the walk. 



Compare such a defective brooder house with the one in 

 use at another farm which I also had the fortune to visit 

 and which is in striking contrast. There is a brooder 



house equipped with abundant heating pipes under the 

 hovers, having a bank of auxilhary heating pipes along the 

 walk, to warm the house, and an adequate heater for the coldest 

 weather. Then there is an electric regulator connected with a 

 thermostat under one of the hovers, and which opens or closes 

 the dampers as the temperature falls or rises from the point 

 desired. IMoreover, the hovers are not back against the walk 

 partition, but out about three feet from it; there is no confined 

 (dead) air under such hovers and no possibility of chicks crowd- 

 ing each other back against a back wall and smothering some. 



( )£ rourse such a brooder 



,,':i't',,^ lainse ciists more than a 



"^iJiS fl/^ -^^ J , , rlic;iply built and inade- 



^^ .-. i^£: n, f^:^ ^ ) V / -, i|nalely lieated one, but it 



tlie chicks," and 

 therefore pays 

 the added cost 

 over and over, 

 instead of aiding 

 to pass them 

 along to the fer- 

 tilizer heap. 



MUST BE 

 WELL HATCHED 



Chicks t o 

 grow well must 

 be well hatch- 

 ed. It is a seri- 

 ous handicap to 

 , the baby life to 

 have great difBi- 

 culty in getting 

 out of the shell; 

 sometimes the 

 struggle for ex- 

 clusion is so 

 violent and ex- 

 hausting that 

 the chick has 

 little chance of 

 making a live 

 of it. There are 

 various causes 

 for this, such as 

 too high or too 

 \ erage temperature 

 ■ incubator, irregu- 

 temperature, and 

 eecentricities; poor 

 iag to the laying 

 being out of condi- 

 i s another potent 

 With the well 



59— HOW MARKET QUALIFICATIONS MAY BE TRANSMITTED 



made, up-to-date and well 

 ventilated incubators of 

 to-day there is no reason for poorly hatched chicks if direc- 

 tions are closely followed, provided, of course, that the 

 eggs are good and strong. The most important thing is 

 that the right temperature be maintained in the incubator, 

 and that it be steadily maintained. It is wiser to err 

 upon the side of a bit too high temperature than letting 

 it run low; it is the opinion of incubator operators 

 that just a Httle too much is better than running the 

 risk of the temperature going too low. This is especially 

 true in winter hatching. As a general rule, the colder 



78 



